


Stand and Deliver

by DiscontentedWinter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, F/M, First Kiss, M/M, Space Highwayman Bobby Finstock, fandomcares, now there's a tag you don't see very often
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25013866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscontentedWinter/pseuds/DiscontentedWinter
Summary: Kira Yukimura is on her way to Beacon, and an arranged marriage, when a meeting with a highwayman changes everything.
Relationships: Bobby Finstock/Kira Yukimura, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Vernon Boyd/Erica Reyes
Comments: 103
Kudos: 311
Collections: Fandom Cares





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia6363](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia6363/gifts).



> This was written as an auction fic for fandomcares. Thank you so much to Mia for supporting such a great cause, and for Fandomcares for putting everything together! And thank you for asking for a regency fic, but IN SPACE! It was super fun to write! 
> 
> I took longer to get to this than I wanted, because Bunnywest and I were also in the middle of writing a novel. (If you want to know more about that, check my [Tumblr](https://thisdiscontentedwinter.tumblr.com/post/622152428394086400/imprisoned-pickpocket-loth-isnt-sure-why-a-bunch))

“Well, Beacon might not be the end of the galaxy,” the guy says as he brushes past Kira with a wink, “but you sure can see it from here!”

In the two days since leaving home, Kira Yukimura has spent a lot of time stealing glances at her travelling companions. She can’t help but think that the young guy with the moles who joined them at Shiprock Station seems like a lot of fun—he’s smart, irreverent and cheeky as hell—but Miss Blake, the chaperone hired by Kira’s parents to make sure she gets to Beacon with her reputation intact, must think the same, because she’s been shooting the guy death stares ever since he got on board the shuttle.

The guy flops down in the seat across from Kira, rummages in his backpack for a moment, and then holds out a pack of candy. “Want one?”

Kira darts at glance at Miss Blake.

“No,” Miss Blake says archly, her gloved hands folded primly on her lap. “Thank you.”

Kira is pretty sure that _thank you_ translates as _go and throw yourself out an airlock_. The guy’s eyes dance, so she thinks he knows it too.

But he shrugs, and leans back in his seat, and eats his candy.

Kira turns her head and looks out the window. Two days of travel have worn the edge off her enthusiasm for the glittering field of stars out there, and isn’t that just typical of humanity? They can even get bored with miracles. Still, Kira keeps her gaze fixed on the stars, because she’s really not in the mood to talk to Miss Blake. Kira feels like she’s been biting her tongue this whole trip so far, and that if she actually gets drawn into a conversation, she might say what she _really_ thinks, and poor Miss Blake doesn’t deserve that. If anyone deserves it, it’s Kira’s mother, but, like a coward, Kira left it too late to stand up to her, didn’t she?

And now, because of one indiscretion that wasn’t _even_ an indiscretion, she’s been packed off to the outer edges of the galaxy, to a planet so newly settled that it’s barely civilized, to be married off to a man she’s never met except over one stilted videolink conversation, because he’s new money who would very much like an association with an old family like the Yukimuras, and Kira should apparently be grateful that the newly minted Baron McCall lives so far out in the provincial planets that the gossip about the stable boy hasn’t reached him. Or maybe it has, and he just doesn’t care. Kira honestly doesn’t know which scenario is worse.

“Look out,” the guy with the moles says. “If the solar wind changes, your face will be stuck like that!”

Kira hadn’t even realized she’d been scowling.

Miss Blake huffs at the young man’s impertinence, but Kira catches his gaze and he winks at her again. The winking should be off-putting, yet somehow it isn’t. Kira doesn’t think he’s flirting with her—if he is, he’s doing a terrible job—but that it’s instead the wink of someone who is just as bored and likely to cause trouble as she is, and he’s sensed a kindred spirit. Kira might be laced tight and buttoned down, and wearing her most impassive mask, but she has the very disconcerting impression that this young man sees straight through all of that, and somehow she warms to it.

“Do either of you ladies play cards?” he asks, pulling a pack out of the pocket of his coat.

Kira could kick his pale, skinny ass at lansquenet, faro _and_ vingt-un, but—

“Ladies do _not_ play card games with strange men,” Miss Blake says coldly. She snaps her fan open, briskly rearranges the air in front of her face, and then snaps it shut again.

“My apologies,” the guy says. “I was just hoping to pass the time.”

“You might try passing it in _silence_ ,” Miss Blake suggests.

The young man gets up from his seat, lifts his backpack onto his shoulder, and then shuffles back down the aisle to find somewhere less chilly to sit. Kira doesn’t blame him.

Kira watches the passing stars and tries not to listen to the conversation behind her, where the guy has apparently met a much warmer welcome. Someone laughs at something he says, and Kira thinks it’s the man with the walrus moustache that she last saw arguing with a vending machine at Shiprock Station. The vending machine, which had eaten his credits, had won.

Then she hears one of the pair of old women who are travelling together say something, but she’s speaking too softly for Kira to make out the words.

“Here?” the guy asks. “No, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. Beacon Bobby hasn’t been heard of in months. He’s probably dead, if you ask me. Or maybe he’s sunning himself on some beach on Capricornia, with a couple of lovely ladies like yourself!”

The ladies titter with laughter.

Beacon Bobby.

Kira reaches into her purse and pulls out her commlink. It’s the latest device, sleek and shiny, and worth a small fortune. She angles the screen so that Miss Blake can’t see what she’s doing, and searches the latest news reports for stories on Beacon Bobby. The young guy with moles is wrong, because Beacon Bobby last held up a shuttle only eight days ago, and it looks like the local authorities out here still have no idea how he’s doing it.

Kira looks out the window wistfully, and wishes she had millions of miles to hide in.

A few more hours pass, and then the tinny PA system in the cabin announces that luncheon will be served. If it’s anything like their meal on the last shuttle, Kira has freeze-dried rice and what she thinks was apricot chicken to look forward to.

The door to the cabin opens, affording a quick glimpse into the galley and, beyond that, the cockpit. The steward steps inside, tugging his uniform straight, and rolls the tray of meals down the aisle. It only takes a few minutes, and then he’s gone again, and the door is shut and sealed behind him. The lock blinks a red light at them.

Kira picks at her food. She leaves the unidentifiable meat, and eats the rice. Then she stares out the window again, and tries to swallow down the rising tide of conflicted feelings that have been threatening to drown her since the start of her journey: panic, rage, fear, and a thousand other unladylike emotions that all clash and swirl together in a maelstrom that bubbles just under her skin. It isn’t _fair_. Nothing about this is fair. Kira is a person, with a heart and a mind of her own, but no _voice_. How is it that she’s twenty-three years old and never realized before that she has no voice? She wants to _scream_ , but what good will that do?

She fixes her gaze on the stars instead, and tries not to think about the rest of her life spooling out in front of her, unknown and yet somehow already set in stone. She will marry a stranger. She will be a baroness. She will produce children. She will be quiet and demure and pleasant, a tiny twinkling star instead of a blazing comet or a fiery supernova, and that will be the sum of her.

Her heart races, and she splays her fingers on her lap when she realizes her thoughts have clenched them into fists. Just when she’s afraid that she will be unable to quell her emotions, the PA system crackles, falls silent, and then crackles again.

Kira frowns. They’re still several hours away from Beacon, and luncheon was only just served. She can’t imagine what announcement is about to follow.

She looks at Miss Blake, and finds she appears faintly puzzled too.

And then the PA system bursts into life except it’s not pre-recorded message, and it’s not an announcement from the captain either:

 _“Stand and deliver,”_ a stranger’s voice says. _“Stand and deliver.”_

The cabin is thrown into immediate uproar.

“It’s Beacon Bobby!” one of the old women exclaims.

Someone screams.

“Now, now, now!” a man says. Kira twists her neck to see it’s man with the walrus-moustache. “There’s no getting in the cabin, see? We’re locked in like sardines in a tin!”

 _“Stand and deliver,”_ the voice on the PA says again, and Kira realizes it’s a transmission. She scans the stars outside her window, but can’t see another ship. Perhaps it’s on the other side of them. _“Stand and deliver.”_

The young guy with the moles and the cheeky grin hurries up to the front of the cabin, and turns to address the passengers. He’s holding his unopened pack of cards in his hand, waving it around as he gesticulates. “The other gentleman is right, everyone. I’m sure we’re perfectly secure in here. Please, stay calm!”

Miss Blake half rises in her seat, and then sinks back down again. She fans herself weakly. “Oh, goodness!”

“I know these shuttles,” Walrus-moustache exclaims. “Why, even the pilot himself can’t get back here while that lock’s engaged, and we’ve just had our lunch so it’s not due to open again until we reach–”

The light beside the lock stops blinking red, and turns solid green again.

The young guy with the moles yelps and leaps away from it.

A woman screams.

And then the door slides open, and Beacon Bobby steps inside the cabin.

*****

The first thing Kira notices about Beacon Bobby is his hair. It’s dark and unkempt, and stands up at all angles at once.

The second thing Kira notices is his eyes. He has hazel eyes, narrowed dubiously as he steps through the door. He’s eyeing the passengers like he’s more disturbed by them then they are by him. It’s not the arrogant look of a criminal mastermind. Instead, it’s the slightly annoyed look of a man who really has better things to do today than rob a shuttle, but, hell, here he is now, so he might as well do this thing. Against all odds, it makes Kira want to laugh.

Kira can’t see much else apart from his hair and his eyes: he’s wearing a mask over the lower half of his face that appears to be made out of _cloth_. He’s not even in a space suit, but there is a tether attached to him that whirs and spools out as he moves forward into the cabin. It’s enough to pique Kira’s curiosity. His own ship must be very close, because how long could he survive in that get-up in space? Fifteen seconds until he passes out due to hypoxia? _Less_?

There’s a holster hanging low on his belt, the leather bumping against his thigh as he moves forward into the cabin. The barrel of his blaster whispers as he pulls the weapon free.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he says. He’s got a voice like pulling tangles through a hairbrush: a whisper, a rasp and a snag all at once. “Your money or your life.”

Miss Blake gasps, and Kira’s heart beats faster. She almost wants to laugh. Her money or her life? Who would want her life? Kira doesn’t even want her life… but she doesn’t want to die either.

“You,” Beacon Bobby says, and waves his blaster at the young guy with the moles. “How about you start filling that backpack of yours with whatever the good people in the cheap seats are carrying?”

The young guy gapes, but all Beacon Bobby has to do is level his blaster at his face and he’s scurrying to obey.

Beacon Bobby swaggers over toward Kira and Miss Blake, and Kira’s sure he’s grinning under that mask. “Ladies.”

Miss Blake places a trembling hand over Kira’s.

Kira doesn’t flinch. She holds her purse up for Beacon Bobby to take. He grips the end of it, and turns it so that her left hand is displayed. The light glints on her diamond ring.

Beacon Bobby whistles. “Now that is one hell of a rock, young lady.” He winks. “Pardon the language.”

Kira stares at her ring as well, as though she’s seeing it for the first time. It’s been like that ever since she put it on: a feeling like a punch in the gut whenever she glimpses it and remembers that she’s _engaged_.

“Who’s the lucky man?” Beacon Bobby asks.

Kira should just let go of her end of the purse, but for some reason she doesn’t. “Lord McCall.”

Beacon Bobby widens his eyes. “Baron McCall?”

His lack of social graces revives Miss Blake. “A baron is addressed as _Lord_. Just as Miss Yukimura, when she is a baroness, will be addressed as _Lady_.”

“Is that so?” Beacon Bobby says. He holds Kira’s gaze. “Well, my apologies, _Lady_.”

Kira feels her mouth twitch. She pulls her hand back at last, leaving him with her purse, and begins to twist her ring off.

“Oh, no,” Beacon Bobby says. “I’m not taking a lady’s engagement ring.”

Kira pulls the ring off. “Why not? I’m sure he can afford another.”

“But it’s a love token,” Beacon Bobby says.

Kira wrinkles her nose and holds the ring out to him. “It’s really not.”

“I don’t want your engagement ring, Miss Yukimura.”

“But neither do I,” Kira says.

Miss Blake gasps and fans herself.

Kira holds Beacon Bobby’s gaze. Is he still smiling under that mask? She isn’t sure now. She only knows she has the absurd urge to apologize for making this whole robbery suddenly so very, very awkward, because she’s still holding out her engagement ring, and he’s still not taking it.

And then the young guy with the moles is back, shoving his backpack towards Beacon Bobby. Beacon Bobby takes it, and puts it on. Then he reholsters his blaster.

“Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen,” he says. His eyes gleam. “Now you might want to sit down and buckle up, because things are about to get windy.”

The young guy dives for the seat next to Kira’s, flailing as he drags the seatbelt across his narrow frame and clips it together.

Kira, still holding out her engagement ring, watches as Beacon Bobby walks backwards to the cabin door. The harness whirrs softly as it retracts.

“Kira,” Miss Blake says breathlessly. “Kira, your seatbelt!”

Kira shoves the ring back on her finger. She moves before she’s even aware of what she’s doing, standing up and dodging the young guy’s reach. And then she’s crossing the cabin floor, breaking into a run as Beacon Bobby steps back out into the tiny alcove between the passenger cabin and the cockpit.

“Kira!” Miss Blake screams.

Kira slams into Beacon Bobby, and his arms come around her instinctively.

His eyes are wide. “What the hell are you—”

And then the exterior door hisses open, and Kira squeezes her eyes shut and holds on tight as they’re both sucked out into space.


	2. Chapter 2

“Holy shit, Bobby,” someone says. “You kidnapped a _baroness_?”

“I didn’t! She kidnapped herself!”

Kira blinks awake. She’s cold, and her skin feels dry and abraded, as though she’s been sand-blasted. She sucks a shuddering breath of air into her aching lungs, and she’s faintly surprised she’s able to do it. She’s lying on a dirty metal floor, she can feel the thrum of an engine running through it, and a bunch of people are staring down at her like she’s some kind of exhibit in a freak show. When she sits up, they all take a step back as though they have no idea what the hell she’s going to do next. Kira has never been unpredictable before in her life, and she discovers that she likes it.

She takes stock of all the faces staring down at her. Beacon Bobby might not be wearing a mask now, but she recognizes his eyes and his hair. He has a nice face. It’s expressive, and elastic. He’s a little rough around the edges, and nobody would call him conventionally handsome, but it’s a lively face and Kira warms to it.

She holds her hand up to him. He grumbles under his breath, but he helps her to her feet.

“Thank you, sir,” she says.

“Don’t…” He grimaces and rubs a hand over his face. “ _Ugh_. Don’t call me that. It’s Bobby. Just Bobby.” He gestures to the others. “And this is Isaac, Erica, Boyd and Peter.”

“Bobby!” It’s a chorus of dissent from the gang, with an added “Jesus fucking Christ” from the young woman with the gorgeous blonde hair.

“What?” Bobby demands. “Maybe I didn’t use your real names! Maybe they’re pseudonyms! She didn’t know, until you all just gave it away! This is why you all suck at cards!”

“Hello,” Kira says, waving tentatively at Bobby’s unhappy gang. “I’m Kira. And I’m not a baroness.”

“What the hell were you thinking back there?” Bobby asks. He tugs at his hair as though he’s about to pull it out in sheer frustration, and Kira wonders if that’s why it looks so wild. “What the _hell_? That’s _space_ out there! You don’t mess around with space!”

Kira nods, her heart beating faster.

It’s _space_.

Kira just dived into the vacuum of space. She feels light-headed just thinking about it, but maybe her blood’s still low on oxygen. Because, _yes_ , that’s _space_ out there! She has a wild urge to laugh, because she’s just done the craziest, most reckless thing in the entire universe, and she’s alive. And, more than that, she can breathe again. For the first time in years it feels like she can breathe.

Bobby glares at her—well, one eye narrows in a glare, and the other one kind of bulges. “What the hell are you smiling about?”

Kira can’t stop the crazy laugh that bubbles out of her. “That’s _space_!”

“I know it is! I just said that!” Bobby unhooks his harness and drops it to the floor with a clatter. “Goddamnit! Greenberg! Set a course for Beacon!”

“Setting a course for Beacon,” comes the staticky reply from the ship’s AI.

Bobby stalks off, still tugging at his hair, boots stamping on the metal floor as he’s swallowed up by the gloom of the ship.

Kira looks around uncertainly at his gang.

“Come on,” the blonde girl, Erica says. “You know what you need after a spacewalk?”

Kira shakes her head.

Erica loops her arm through hers and says, brightly, “Tequila.”

Well, Kira’s not going to argue with that.

*****

The Cyclone is kind of a shit heap. That’s exactly how Erica describes the ship. “It’s kind of a shit heap,” she says, gesturing around the common area, strewn with books and clothes and cushions that have fallen off the couch, “but it’s home.”

Her sharp grin softens into something more genuine when she says the word _home_. She digs out a bottle of tequila from somewhere, and twists the top off. She points Kira toward the couch, and then fetches a few chipped mugs from the galley and tips tequila into them.

The tequila burns, but Kira likes the sting of it.

“So, a baroness,” Erica says at last.

“No,” Kira says. She glares at the ring on her finger. “Because I’m not going to marry the baron.”

“So that’s why you did it? That’s why you grabbed Bobby? Because you didn’t want to marry Scott McCall?”

“I mean, he might be nice,” Kira says, the words ending on an unintended upward inflection.

“He’s a pompous dick,” Erica says. She shifts, and her leather pants squeak against the worn vinyl fabric of the couch. “Actually! Actually, this is hilarious, but Bobby used to teach him!”

“What?”

“Bobby was a school teacher,” Erica says. “Once upon a time!” She leans in towards Kira, and reaches out to pluck at her dress. “This is so pretty! Boyd? Boyd, I want pretty dresses! Buy me pretty dresses. Or steal them for me.”

“Steal them yourself,” Boyd says from over in the tiny galley.

“I will!”

Over the course of the next hour, Kira learns more about her unwilling hosts. Erica is the mechanic, and Boyd, her husband, is the pilot. They’ve known Bobby for years. So has Isaac, who, according to Erica, can pick any lock—or pocket—faster than anyone else this side of Shiprock. Peter is—vaguely—the guy who knows the right people, and Bobby…

Erica’s eyes brighten. “Bobby is the only person I’ve ever met who is crazy enough to fling himself into space without a suit—until you!”

“He’s not very happy with me,” Kira says, and her stomach swoops at the thought of the way he’d looked at her.

Erica waves a hand. “No, he’s like that with everyone. That’s just his personality. You get used to it.”

Kira raises her eyebrows. “Will I be given the chance?”

“That’s not for me to decide,” Erica says, her expression suddenly serious. “For the record, while we could do with a little more estrogen on this shit heap, this is your whole life you’re talking about. Nobody else can make that decision for you.”

Kira wants to laugh again, because in her experience it’s always been other people deciding for her. What to wear, what to say, what to study, who to marry. She burns with sudden envy for Erica, and for everyone onboard the Cyclone. Maybe they’ve all made terrible decisions that led them to a life of crime, but at least they made them for themselves, and at least they seem happy.

And clearly her and Erica are from very different worlds if Erica doesn’t yet realize that Kira made her decision the moment she held onto Beacon Bobby as he was pulled out into space. Her mother went and got her engaged to Lord McCall just because she’d been found playing cards with the stable boy with her stockings off. For _this_ , though? Are nunneries still a thing? Because Kira thinks this could earn her life imprisonment in a nunnery, and she already couldn’t breathe.

No, her decision has definitely been made. She doesn’t know where she’s going from here, but she knows she’s not going back. Not back home to her parents, and not back to a life of tightly-laced corsets and the even more tightly-laced expectations of marriage to Scott McCall.

And yet…Bobby’s also made his decision, hasn’t he? They’re headed for Beacon, and Kira can’t imagine that he wants to keep her on board.

She sets her mug down on the foot locker coffee table and stands. She straightens the fall of her dress out of habit, and snorts at herself for doing it. God. As if any of that even matters right now! As if it ever really did.

“Is there anywhere I’m not allowed to go?” she asks.

“You already know our names,” Erica says with a grin. “I don’t think that seeing Isaac’s Star Pony Collectables is going to put us at any greater risk, do you?”

“I guess not.”

The Cyclone is a small ship. The crew cabins are crowded close together, between the galley and the cockpit. Kira trails her fingertips along the bulkhead wall as she moves down the corridor. A few of the doors are closed; a few aren’t. Straight ahead, about thirty feet from the galley, the cockpit door is open. Kira can see the back of Boyd’s head, and the dizzying expanse of space in front of him as he navigates their way through it. She wonders what it’s like to chase down passenger shuttles, ducking and diving to keep in the blind spots of their slipstream before getting close enough so that Bobby can make the leap across to them, through that dizzying expanse of blackness.

She passes an open cabin. It’s small, but spotlessly clean. There’s a double bed inside it, and Peter is lying on it reading a magazine. He doesn’t notice Kira as she moves past, or at least he doesn’t look up.

The next cabin is Bobby’s, and it couldn’t be more of a contrast. There are clothes all over the floor, and books and empty bottles strewn everywhere. It looks like a flea market and a dumpster met in a high speed collision, and the first responders couldn’t untangle the wreckage. Bobby is standing in the middle of the mess, like a rat in a nest, and he stares at Kira wildly as she appears in his doorway.

“It’s…” He gestures at the mess, flustered. “It’s not always this bad.”

Kira finds the obvious lie endearing, because why should Beacon Bobby care what she thinks of his atrocious housekeeping skills?

“It’s very nice,” Kira says, answering his lie with one of her own.

Bobby screws his face up like a toddler refusing vegetables, and he looks around helplessly. “Its… it’s _not_.”

Kira bites her bottom lip.

Bobby sighs, and wades his way through a pile of junk to the door. “Listen, miss,” he says, and then raises his eyebrows. “Madam? Lady?”

“Kira,” Kira says firmly.

“Kira,” he repeats, dragging his fingers through his crazy hair. “Well listen, Kira, I don’t know what the hell you were thinking out there today, and I _really_ don’t know what the hell you think is going to happen from here.”

“Me neither,” Kira admits, and then says, tentatively, “I didn’t mean to be a bother.”

Bobby squints at her. “Huh.”

“What?”

“You didn’t mean to be a bother,” Bobby says. “I’ll bet you’ve been saying that your whole life, haven’t you?”

“I…” Kira creases her forehead in thought. Has she? Her stomach twists, and she thinks that yes, she has.

“You ever thought that you _should_ be a bother?” Bobby asks. He looks her up and down. “That you’ve got as much right as anyone else to be a bother if you want to be?”

Kira’s heart beats a little faster, because there’s something dangerous about Beacon Bobby, and it has nothing to do with that blaster he was waving around earlier on the shuttle. Kira feels as though she’s spent her whole lift straining against the fences that her parents and society have built around her, tight as corsetry, and Bobby just stumbled in like a drunken mule and knocked them all down with a single sentence.

 _You ever thought that you_ should _be a bother?_

Words like that suck her breath out of her as quickly as the vacuum of space.

“I meant I didn’t mean to be a bother to you,” she says, her words hitching.

Bobby snorts. “Do I look like I can’t handle a bit of bother?”

He looks like he can’t handle a hairbrush and the ability to dress himself, but bother? Kira gets the impression that, despite all his grumbling, Bobby thrives on bother.

“You look like you can handle it,” she agrees, and smiles.

“You bet I can,” he says, his eyes twinkling with good humor despite his scowl. “Now, listen, it’s up to you if you want to ditch us at Beacon or not. If you spin this right, you can be dining with the who’s who of Beacon society tonight with a story about how you were abducted by Beacon Bobby—though, I gotta say, the who’s who of Beacon is probably equivalent to the _who’s that_ _and who invited them_ of wherever you’re from. The point is, if you spun it right, you could dine out on this for years to come.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Kira asks.

“If you don’t want to, there’s a spare cabin at the end of the corridor,” Bobby says.

Kira’s stomach clenches. “I don’t understand. Aren’t you heading to Beacon to put me off the ship? Wasn’t that the plan?”

“We’re heading to Beacon to pick someone up,” Bobby says. He quirks an eyebrow. “If it’d been the plan to dump you there, do you really think I would have told you everyone’s names?”

“Well, maybe you told me their names because you were planning on murdering me and it wouldn’t have mattered,” Kira suggests.

“Murder?” Bobby asks. “Look at this place! I’ve already got enough shit to clean up without adding a corpse to the mix.”

Kira laughs, the sound escaping her before she can swallow it down. She should be scared, or panicking, or _something_ , not just because Bobby is a criminal and most certainly _not_ a gentleman, but also because her whole universe got turned on its head today—except all she feels is relief, and delight, and, for the first time in as long as she can remember, Kira feels free.

She laughs louder and longer than any lady should, and Bobby grins, and ducks his head and scratches the back of his neck. When he looks up again, his face is flushed, and he’s wearing a lopsided grin like he’s happy that she’s happy.

Kira doesn’t think that anyone has ever looked at her like that before.

She could get used to it.


	3. Chapter 3

The spaceport at Beacon might be the liveliest place Kira has ever seen. It’s like a cross between a passenger terminal and an open-air market, and it’s spread across about two square miles of the town. Beacon itself is a little bigger than Kira imagined it would be; a bustling township rather than the tiny backwater village she’d been imagining, but still nothing like home.

For a moment, as the wave of noise and heat and dust hits her, Kira feels completely out of her depth, but the sharp pang of longing for the familiar is gone as soon as she even registers it, because she refuses to let her fear of the unknown drive her back into a cage. She tugs her borrowed coat more tightly around her, and steps down the ramp. Her loose trousers, borrowed from Erica, make her look like a farmer or a worker, and nothing at all like a lady. The fabric is rough and coarse, and they’re somehow still the most comfortable thing that Kira’s ever worn. The hat borrowed from Isaac completes the look.

“Still want to get rid of that ring?” Bobby asks, striding down the ramp behind her. He’s wearing the backpack he took off the guy on the shuttle earlier.

Kira squeezes her hand into a fist; she’s wearing the ring with the diamond turned inward so that it doesn’t stand out as much. She nods.

“You’d better come with me and Peter then.”

Bobby doesn’t give her the chance to ask where they’re going—he just sets off into the crowd with Peter, and Kira hurries along behind them. She casts a look back at Erica and Boyd, and finds them moving off in a different direction. Isaac, who’s been left to mind the ship, is sitting on the ramp in the late afternoon sunlight looking bored.

The spaceport is full of sounds and sights and smells that all compete for Kira’s attention, but she’s determined not to be distracted. She doesn’t distrust Bobby, but she figures that if she gets lost, he’s not exactly going to send a search party looking for her. She’s not going to lose him.

Bobby leads her a few blocks down from where the _Cyclone_ landed, to a row of storefronts. Bobby holds open the door of what appears to be a book store and ushers her inside. Peter follows.

The interior of the store is dark after the brightness of the day outside. The store is cluttered with shelves that are in turn cluttered with books; most appear to be second-hand, and in various states of disrepair. Kira wonders how a place like this can ever survive.

“Well, well,” the man behind the counter says. “Bobby Finstock. What have you got for me?”

The man is a little older than Bobby. He’s gray around the temples, and he has a clever, assessing gaze that slides over Kira briefly.

“Chris.” Bobby slings the backpack up onto the counter, unzips it, and then tips the contents out. “IDs mostly, and credit chips. A few commlinks.”

Chris hums noncommittally, and begins to pick through the items.

“Oh!” Kira exclaims. “You’re a _fence_!”

Chris and Bobby both stare at her. From over by the door, Peter snorts.

Kira’s face burns. “I’ll just… look at the books.”

“She’s new,” Bobby says after a beat.

Chris hums again. “I know exactly who she is, Bobby. McCall’s been kicking up a stink up and down the length of the port ever since the shuttle from Shiprock arrived and his fiancée wasn’t on it.” He glances at Kira again. “You’re going to need to lay low for a while, I think. I hear Fairvale is nice this time of year.”

Kira inspects a shelf of mildew-stained books for a while. Peter joins her.

“Four-fifty,” Chris says at last.

“Bullshit,” Bobby says. “Seven hundred even.”

“Five hundred,” Chris counters. “That’s my final offer.”

“How’s Allison?” Bobby asks. “It’d be a shame if Isaac couldn’t afford to buy her that crossbow she wants for her birthday.”

Chris narrows his eyes. “Five-fifty.”

“Six hundred,” Bobby says, and they shake on it. “Kira, show Chris that rock of yours.”

Kira steps forward, twisting her engagement ring off. She sets it down on the counter.

“Jesus.” Chris picks it up and inspects it. “This might be worth more than your ship, Bobby.”

Bobby bristles indignantly.

“I’ll give you three thousand for it,” Chris says.

Kira picks up the ring and twists it so that the light gleams on the multi-faceted diamond. She’s not a fool. She knows that Chris is making a profit on this deal, or he wouldn’t be making it at all. The ring is easily worth five thousand, but where the hell else is Kira going to sell it? And it’s not like she’s losing money, since it was a gift in the first place.

“Three thousand,” she says, “and as many books as I can fit in that backpack.”

Chris’s face splits with a smile. “Deal.”

They shake on it.

Chris has to go out the back to his safe to get that much cash, so Kira grabs the now-empty backpack and heads over to the shelves. She’s so engrossed in selecting titles that it takes her a moment to register the sound of the door opening.

“Holy shit!” a voice exclaims.

Kira looks up, startled, to discover the young guy from the shuttle closing the door behind himself. The candy-offering card-playing knowingly-winking guy.

“I—” Kira begins.

“That was the craziest goddamn thing I ever saw!” the young guy says, darting forward. “Holy shit! I thought Bobby was gonna have an aneurism!”

“So did Bobby,” Bobby mutters.

“I’m Stiles,” the guys says. “And you’re a fucking badass!”

Kira blinks in shock, and then everything falls into place as Peter grabs Stiles and plants a kiss right on his lips.

“You’re the inside guy!” she exclaims. “The passenger cabin shouldn’t have been able to be opened at all, but you were there, waving around your—your—”

Stiles grins and digs his pack of cards out of his pocket. “What? This old thing?” He flips the lid open, and Kira sees a tangle of wires and flashing lights. “It’s just a tiny little scrambler. Hardly any range at all. Just enough to pop open a few locks here and there.”

Kira’s jaw drops. “But you asked if we wanted to play cards! What if we’d said yes?”

“Oh, please.” Stiles winks. “Ladies playing cards with a strange man? There was no way your chaperone was going to go for that.”

“I knew you were trouble!”

He grins. “I knew you were, too. I didn’t think you’d grab hold of Bobby like that, though.”

“It was a split-second decision,” Kira says, although she’s not really sure that it was. The Bobby part of it is, certainly, but the desperate urge to escape? She’d felt that crawling under her skin for years now, if she’s honest with herself, way before her engagement to Scott McCall. It’s just that today she finally acted on it. 

She feels a stab of guilt for leaving Miss Blake the way she did though. 

She bites her lip. “My chaperone... Is she okay?” 

“There were smelling salts involved,” Stiles says, his nose wrinkling, “but by the time we got here she was already accepting an invitation to stay with the Misses Carstairs, the parson’s daughters, until she can book passage back, and she seemed to be rallying.” 

Kira is relieved. She doesn’t like Miss Blake much—she barely knew her, and in their brief acquaintance Miss Blake existed only as an extension of Kira’s parents’ authority—but she bears her no animosity.

She watches out of the corner of her eye as Peter reaches out and grabs Stiles by the belt, then reels him in for another kiss, both of them grinning. It’s a casual kiss, a lazy kiss, and one that speaks of a careless sort of intimacy that can only be built up over time. A part of Kira instinctively shies away from it—the part raised and conditioned by her parents, who she’s never even seen hold hands in public—but the larger part of her envies it, and aches for something the same, for someone, for herself.

Her gaze shifts to Bobby before she can even question herself, and she finds him looking back at her, appearing somehow both cranky and bashful at the same time. It really shouldn’t be as endearing as it is, but Kira’s smile widens, and Bobby blushes and turns away so quickly that he almost crashes into a shelf of books.

Then Chris comes back with the money, and their business at the bookshop is at an end.

*****

Peter and Stiles walk wrapped up together like they’re trying to climb into one another’s pockets, winding around each other like ivy and somehow not tripping over their feet. Kira and Bobby walk behind them, and Kira is conscious of Bobby’s closeness, or his _not_ closeness: there are several inches between them, but somehow that space seems warmer, heavier, than the rest of the air around it. Kira is very aware that it would only take a single sideways step to bring their bodies into contact. Her eyes are wide as she drinks in all the sights of Beacon’s port—the people, the stalls, the storefronts, the constant bustle that kicks up a layer of dust—but it’s Bobby that consumes her thoughts. Bobby, with his weird hair and his funny face. There’s nothing especially compelling about his looks, but her heart still skips a beat when she thinks of the way he fixed her with a challenging stare and said, _“You ever thought that you_ should _be a bother?”_ Something about Bobby is magnetic, and Kira can feel herself being pulled towards him. She thinks of matter drawn to singularities, and planets that dance in elliptical quadrilles around their stars. Falling into Bobby’s orbit seems so easy.

Kira darts quick glances at Bobby as they walk, and more than once catches him looking back at her, a pink tinge rising on his cheeks.

There are a thousand distractions along the dusty thoroughfares of the Beacon spaceport for a young lady who’s barely stepped outside her gilded cage before, and yet Kira finds herself interested in just one thing: the scruffy, slightly prickly, certainly ungentlemanly fellow walking beside her. She likes the way the sunlight makes his green eyes shine, and his blush more apparent. She thinks he knows he’s blushing too, because he scowls a lot, and it makes her want to laugh. What would it be like to close the distance between them and take his hand in hers? It certainly wouldn’t be the craziest thing Kira’s done today.

Kira’s thinking about it so hard that it takes her a moment to realise that Peter and Stiles have stopped walking.

“We might have trouble,” Peter says in a low voice.

Kira cranes her neck to see.

There, across the square, she sees several men in uniform that must be local law enforcement. And there’s another man with them, this one in a fashionable coat and cravat. His mouth is pulled down in a frown, and he’s gesticulating wildly at one of the constables. A lock of dark hair falls over his forehead as he nods his head emphatically.

Scott McCall.

He’s only young, probably no older than Kira, but he already has the stubborn jut to his chin of a man twice his age, and the affronted glare of a man who is unaccustomed to being told no. He’s clearly unhappy that his fiancée wasn’t on the shuttle from Shiprock, although what he expects a group of land-bound constables to do about it, Kira has no idea. For all anyone knows, Beacon Bobby might be half the galaxy away now, not barely twenty feet.

“Keep walking,” Bobby mutters, and loops an arm around Kira’s waist.

Kira gasps reflexively, before she realises that she doesn’t hate it, and, in fact, she might like it quite a lot. Bobby is warm and broad, and easy to lean into.

They keep walking.

“You there!” The voice is imperious, nasal, and it _grates_ on every nerve in Kira’s body. “You there! Stop!”

Bobby stops, and Kira fights the urge to run as he swings them around to face Baron McCall.

Baron McCall barely spares them a glance before he flicks his wrist and waves them on.

Kira’s heart wants to beat its way out of her chest. She’s not entirely sure what just happened, until Bobby’s arm tightens around her waist and they’re moving again. Kira catches a glimpse of her reflection in a storefront window.

A young woman, her hair worn loose, in trousers and a dusty jacket, and a hat jammed on her head. Scott McCall looked right at her, and then he looked right through her.

No, she thinks, that’s not quite right. He must have looked right through her that time they spoke on the videolink. Maybe he’d seen her hair, pulled into a neat chignon with only a few artful curls allowed to escape—a painful process to achieve, since Kira’s hair has never naturally curled, so it was knotted in rags that dug into her skull every night. Maybe he’d seen the fine fabric of her dress, and the glint of a gold necklace against her skin. Maybe he’d seen past her, into the drawing room full of fine art. Baron McCall had heard her name, and seen the trappings of her rank in society, but he’d never seen Kira. He couldn’t have, or he would have recognised her even in her borrowed clothes.

It doesn’t sting. Kira wonders if it should, but it doesn’t. It’s what she suspected all along, after all. She can’t even bring herself to hold it against Baron McCall. He’s no different than any other suitably marriageable gentlemen out there, no doubt, where marriage is a contract, a calculation, a mutually beneficial consolidation of money and social standing. And maybe that’s good enough for most of the landed gentry, but it’s not good enough for Kira Yukimura.

She slips her arm around Bobby’s waist, and laughs when he flails and makes a weird half-strangled yelp of a sound.

Kira’s done with being someone else’s possession. It’s time she figured out how to be her own woman. And she might just have found the right group of people—and the right kind of man—to help her figure it out.

She smiles at Bobby as they walk back to the ship, and he turns pink-cheeked again, but he doesn’t let her go.

Then again, if he didn’t do it this morning when they were hurtling through the vacuum of space together, she doubts he ever will.

Grabbing hold of Bobby before that airlock opened was the bravest thing she’s done today.

So far.

Bobby’s arm is still around her waist, so Kira stops and turns into his embrace. She reaches up and presses her palms against his cheeks before he can step back in surprise, and then pushes up onto her toes and kisses him.

It’s messy, and maybe Kira half-misses his mouth the first time she tries to hit it, but the second time she gets it, and his lips open underneath hers, and a rush of affection and heat and fluttering nervousness whips through Kira like a whirlwind, leaving her heart racing and her skin prickling.

She pulls away, and discovers that Bobby is just as wide-eyed as she is, and he’s grinning.

“That’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done,” she tells him, breathless.

His grin grows. “I like it when you’re brave.”

“So do I,” Kira says, and kisses him again.

They have to run to catch up with Peter and Stiles.


	4. Chapter 4

_EPILOGUE_

Kira rolls her eyes as the handsy man with the monocle finds yet another reason to squeeze past her in the aisle as she’s pulling her bag down from the overhead rack. She drives her elbow back sharply, and the man lets out a startled _oof_.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sir,” Kira lies sweetly, and then sits down in her seat again.

The man wheezes and groans, and staggers off towards the bathroom.

“Good for you,” the young woman across the aisle says, leaning over. A curl of strawberry blonde hair escapes her chignon. “That man is no gentleman!”

“Lydia,” the older woman next to her warns. Mother or chaperone, Kira isn’t sure.

Lydia rolls her eyes, and digs her book out of her handbag. It appears to be about astrophysics, but to be honest even the title doesn’t make any sense to Kira.

Kira leans back in her seat and looks out at the stars, and smiles softly to herself as she turns the ring on her finger. An unmarried young woman should never travel alone, Peter had pointed out when he’d given Kira the slightly beaten-out-of-shape gold ring. Which had led to all sorts of hurt feelings—and a screaming match up and down the length of the _Cyclone_ —when Bobby had found out.

“It’s part of her disguise, Bobby!” Peter had bellowed. “I’m not asking her to marry me! I gave her a pair of spectacles too! That doesn’t make me her fucking optometrist!”

Stiles and Kira had watched in interest as Bobby and Peter had almost come to blows.

“If you want to give her a ring, then fucking do it then!” Peter had eventually yelled.

Which had led to possibly the most awkward marriage proposal ever, but since when did life with Bobby Finstock make any sense? If the past eight months have taught Kira anything, it’s that every day it’s chaos, and she loves it.

Kira smiles and twists the ring on her finger, which is much nicer than the one Peter set aside as a disguise. Marriage hasn’t changed anything much between her and Bobby, except he finally cleaned up the mess in his quarters. More or less.

The steward comes and collects their trays from lunch, and Kira tries to read for a little while.

The old man with the monocle returns to his seat, glaring at Kira.

Next time she’ll find a way to hit him in the balls.

But for now…

Kira allows herself a moment to drink in the view. After eight months of living on a ship, she’s still not tired of it. A field of stars stretches out into infinity. It’s magnificent. It’s dizzying. It threatens to steal her breath every time.

But more than that, it’s _home_.

Kira checks the time, and then leans over and smiles at the man sitting across from her. He’s exactly the sort of prissy gentleman who will be absolutely affronted at her forwardness, which is why she’s chosen him. 

“Excuse me, sir,” she says, pulling the small packet from her handbag. “Would you like to play cards?”


End file.
